Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah – Reuters
CAIRO – 12 October 2017: Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah called on the international community Thursday to exert pressure on Israel to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel has imposed movement restrictions on the Gaza Strip since the early 1990s. These included setting barriers, checkpoints, and bureaucratic constraints within the occupied Palestinian territory.
These restrictions, which have intensified in 2007 after Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip, have crippled different economic activities, and isolated Gaza in particular from the “outside world” and the West Bank; causing humanitarian issues for Palestinians and keeping 1.8 million “locked in.”
Hamas’ movement had announced on September 17 the dissolution of the administrative committee in the Gaza Strip, inviting the Government of National Reconciliation to assume its duties and hold general elections. The movement affirmed it would comply with the Cairo Social Reconciliation Accord signed in 2011 between Fatah and Hamas.
The Consensus Government convened in Gaza for the first time since 2014 on October 3. Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah headed the first cabinet meeting as the first actual procedure to assume administration of Gaza.
Comments
Leave a Comment